Compressed Vice - Television Tropes & Idioms

The plotline has a character display some vice, flaw, prejudice, or other negative attribute/behavior, which said character has never before this point shown any signs of suffering from, but which they then engage in solely as the setup for some sort of One Shot gag or An Aesop. (In some cases, the plot claims/suggests that they've always had this problem, even though previous episodes show otherwise.) It then vanishes totally after the end of the gag and/or plot. Sometimes this is meant to serve as Character Development, but due to the entire process being constrained to that one single episode, it's not very convincing.

This is distinct from writers adding enduring flaws to a Flat Character, or flaws no one notices with Moral Dissonance. If the character has to try and lose the vice in the same episode, they'll find Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere.

Compare Long Lost Uncle Aesop.

Examples

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Film

Live Action TV

Joey from Blossom hates a gay guy in one episode, revealing a prejudice that hadn't previously been mentioned in the show. Later in that episode, his black sister-in-law tells him a story about how she faced discrimination as a child, causing him to renounce his prejudice as quickly as he developed it.
- Wasn't it more a resistance to a friend coming out to him by revealing that he had feelings for him (Joey gets note from "Leslie," doesn't know which Leslie it is, and then his friend Les says that it was from him)? In that case, Joey being angry for a awhile makes sense since Les knew he was straight. I don't remember it being "Joey hates the gays."
A particularly offensive episode of Lizzie Mcguire featured her pal Miranda becoming anorexic and then getting over it within the course of a week.
- It also had Gordo becoming addicted to Deeandeeaproximine...and then getting over it within the course of a week.
- As does an episode of The Facts Of Life, which had Sue Ann getting, and recovering from, anorexia.
- D.J. had anorexia for fifteen minutes on Full House. They literally reduced it to skipping a couple of meals before being saved by Aunt Becky.
Likewise, an episode of Diffrent Strokes has Kimberly getting bulimia.
An early episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers showed Sixth Ranger Tommy being forgetful. After that, he forgot about being forgetful.
- The most common excuse as to why Tommy turned up late to the battles was that he had "forgotten his morpher". The real reason was that in the original Super Sentai Zyuranger, his counterpart had to turn up at the last minute because he was living on borrowed time and his place of residence delayed the inevitable.
  - Those are fan based rumors. Tommy never in fact forgot his Morpher ever. The reason he was always late for battle were because he was otherwise indisposed through various reasons(captured by mooks, finishing his halloween costume, knocked out the Monster Of The Week, working on a talent show, taking kids trick or treating) throughout the arc between his initial joining and his powers weakening and once they weakened he was ordered to stay out of battle at all costs unless absolutely needed as a trump card. That said Tommy was always slightly forgetful but it only really was a problem for him in that one ep.
- There was a later episode when someone (I believe it was Tanya) said "Tommy's always late".
An episode of Spin City had Carter trying to quit smoking, despite having never been seen touching tobacco before (or since). This episode also featured Paul getting addicted to nicotine gum.
Neds Declassified School Survival Guide, "Guide to School Records"- Ned is a basically well-intentioned, "smart but lazy" kid in the rest of the series, but this episode shows him pulling all sorts of deliberately mean pranks on his way to accruing the biggest permanent record in the school. Flashbacks are used, which (unusually for the show) were filmed just for this episode, not taken from earlier ones, further playing up the trope.
If a young attractive female character is introduced to a series and some fuss is made over the "fact" that she smokes, then it is near certain that that will be the last time that she is seen with tobacco, or that it will even be mentioned. Examples-
- Lois Lane in Smallville;
- Mimi Clark in Jericho;
- Marissa Taylor in the defunct Australian comedy/drama Always Greener. Admittedly this last one could be regarded as just a set-up for a joke about an exploding cow, but credibility was stretched in a later episode where she stood right next to another character who was smoking, without batting an eyelid.
In the Monk episode Mr. Monk and the Naked Man Monk is suddenly shown to have an absolute hatred of nudists, to the point that he is willing to make up increasingly unbelievable reasons as to how the guest character killed someone, even though he has an airtight alibi. Monk and his shrink figure out, in the course of 3 minutes, that Monk is just freaking out because he remembers his own birth, and getting slapped on the butt while naked to start his lungs up. (This was either a Wall Banger or hilarious, depending on how you look at it) This is never mentioned before nor after this episode, although it does fit the character well.
- Plus, in the baseball episode previously he required serious coaxing to talk to a nude model.
- Fear of nudity is one of his phobias. Natalie mentions how he freaks out if he sees himself naked in the mirror, he was nervous just looking at "nakedish" Las Vegas showgirls, and had a breakdown on the witness stand in one episode when a piece of evidence presented before the court was a sculpture of a nude woman.
A particularly extreme example appeared on Rome, with the reveal that Octavian was deeply in love with (as in, wanted to have sex with) his own sister. Not only had nothing even hinting about this ever come up before, but the episode itself has zero hints about it until Servilia lets his sister know— which actually justifies it, as he was clearly very good at keeping it secret.
- Extreme example? Octavian's feeling for his sister are quite obvious in the episodes before this one, especially given the cold way he interacts with everyone else.
  - SHE WAS HIS SISTER! Being a cold-hearted stoic regarding anything and everyone but his beloved sister ~~doesn't~~ shouldn't mean "want to bone her".
- There were a few subtle hints in earlier episodes. For one Octavia is at least once portrayed clearly uncomfortable with the way Octavian stares at her. Also, remember when Atia forced Octavian to visit a brothel against his will? It took him about two seconds to change his mind about the whole affair when he noticed how much one of the girls offered to him resembled his sister. The trope still kinda fits, though, since few people understood these hints before the issue was brought out by Servilia. ThisTroper would have totally missed the latter one while re-watching the show, had not someone pointed it out to him.
Averted in Friends, where Chandler is seen smoking regularly in episodes at the beginning of the series, quits after a season or two, then is occasionally seen taking it up again in times of deep stress over the remainder of the series. His smoking is never the subject of an A storyline (and rarely the B storyline), but the lingering habit was an example of good continuity over the ten-year run.
- However, in the first episode where we see Chandler smoke and the others disapprove of it, he delivers a speech about how he accepts their flaws and only expects them to accept his in return. Said flaws include Joey cracking his knuckles, Monica snorting when she laughs and Phoebe chewing her hair — none of them appeared before, or after this episode. The one about Ross overpronouncing every word applies, though.
- A Friends episode that shows less respect for continuity comes in the Season Five New Year's episode where Rachel suddenly turns into a gossip who can't shut up about her coworkers' dirty laundry. The whole thing turns out to be a plot device to launch us into a Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere plot as Rachel resolves to stop gossiping, and then immediately discovers the unkeepable secret that Chandler and Monica are doin' it.
- Chandler gets a straight example of the trope when he is terrified of dogs for one episode. Dogs appear other times through the run of the show, before and after this episode, and he is perfectly fine with them.
  - Before that episode Chandler deliberately kept it a secret because of people's tendency to treat a dislike of dogs as a serious character flaw. Also, it did come up again in the episode involving Phoebe's wedding.
Aesops about snoring tend to suffer from this, as characters spontaneously develop the habit and then no reference is made to this afterwards. Examples include Joey from Friends (Chandler can suddenly hear him through the wall after living with him for five years with no problem), Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H (his tentmates don't notice until it's made a plot point), and Homer Simpson from The Simpsons (he suddenly starts snoring loudly after years of sleeping with his wife).
- In the case of Charles, he was only snoring because of allergies acting up, leaving him unable to breathe normally.
Done in Red Dwarf where the crew is forced through the air ducts of Starbug. Lister is revealed to have claustrophobia. Subverted somewhat when Cat lists a number of examples where he's been trapped in a confined space and didn't freak out, naturally this didn't help Lister.
Worf was the victim of this in the episode where a genderless alien species showed up, and he was saying things like it being "unnatural" and the like. This particular prejudice wasn't seen previously in all the cases where he met aliens who didn't have a traditional gender setup, and never appeared again.
- Although he did show a rather conservative bent in a later episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. On the other hand, that episode was shite.
  - Oh, and did we mention that he would marry a Trill...a symbiotic being whose symbiont would outlive its female host, possibly being put into a male the next time?
There was a late episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where there was a homicidal shapeshifter on the station, and the other main characters responded by revealing their prejudice against shapeshifters, which had never been hinted at before, even after years of fighting a Dominion run by shapeshifters.
- Similar example in Star Trek Voyager, in an episode where the Doctor (no, not that Doctor) found out that Janeway had tampered with his memories to prevent him going "insane" over an old triage case, and Janeway and the entire crew suddenly seemed to develop an anti-hologram prejudice which then immediately vanished again next episode.
  - The question of whether the Emergency Medical Hologram is a sentient being with rights, or a piece of software who can be altered at will or confined to Voyager, is actually an ongoing issue with Captain Janeway — not an example of this trope.
Very much averted in Babylon 5. Michael Garibaldi is a textbook case of a recovering drunk, where one episode focused on him falling off the wagon but then spent the rest of the series mentioning him ordering water, making sure that what he is given is alcohol-free and explaining why he can't have wine in his glass, only for him to fall of the deep end in season 5 and have that being a major character arc. There is also Dr. Stephen Franklin who is seen taking stims and called up (by Garibaldi) for depending on stims a full season before it became a plot point.
- Those aren't the only cases of B5 (a show that actually cared about continuity at a time when that wasn't at all the norm) averting this trope. But on the other hand, it was also guilty of it on a species-wide scale in "There All the Honor Lies" (significantly, an episode JMS didn't write).
Averted in Supernatural. The fourth episode of Season One dealt with Dean's fear of flying and it was brought up in the second episode of Season Two (which dealt with Sam's fear of clowns), leading to this funny exchange:
Sam: Well at least I'm not afraid of flying.
Dean: (suddenly defensive) Planes crash!
Sam: And apparently clowns kill!
Degrassi. Great muppety Odin, Degrassi.
Tommy from 3rd Rock is revealed in one episode to have been hiding sandwich bags full of spices to indulge his secret cooking hobby in secret ("It's marijuana, I smoke it with friends I swear!"). This is never mentioned again.
M*A*S*H: the plot of episode "C*A*V*E" is based on Hawkeye's suffering from crippling claustrophobia, which had never been mentioned before and was never referred to again.
- Likewise Colonel Foster in the UFO episode "Sub-Smash".
The Professionals. In "Klansmen" Bodie displays overt racist behaviour never shown previously by his character, and due to the events of the episode (in which his life is saved by a black doctor) we never see it again. Actor Lewis Collins was not pleased.
Subverted in the Malcolm In The Middle episode where Francis turns out to have been in AA despite never having been shown getting drunk in previous episodes. The other characters find out that he had all the signs of alcoholism except for drinking.
And a straight example from Malcolm In The Middle. There are a handful of occasions where Hal is seen smoking. Every time it happens, it is to support a gag. Apart from this, there are no other mentions of Hal being a smoker.
An episode of How I Met Your Mother deals with the annoying habits of the group. The bad habits of Ted, Marshall, Barney and Robin are noticeable prior to the episode (although Robin’s misuse of the word ‘literally’ was subtle before it was pointed out), and they still have them in later episodes. Lily’s habit of chewing too loudly is a true Compressed Vice, as it appeared only for that episode.
- Another episode shows all five characters being habitual cigarette smokers. Previously, Barney and Robin had been seen smoking cigars, and it was hinted that Robin smoked cigarettes, but this episode portrayed Robin as practically a chimney. The other characters don't smoke nearly as often, but obviously way more than has ever been let on before. Ted's children are stunned at the news. Justified in that Ted is an Unreliable Narrator and has simply left this detail out up to now.
On Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia, remember when Dennis and Dee got addicted to crack? Or when the whole gang got sentenced to a whole bunch of community service? Or when Mac got raped? Neither do they.
- Are you sure you've watched the show? Dennis and Dee being addicted to crack comes up so many times across multiple seasons, It was Dennis that got raped, and not many people want to tell people they had been raped, also the whole community service thing? Well considering the groups track record I'm betting it'll come up in a later episode with them showing how they hadn't shown up for it in over a year.

Newspaper Comics

Webcomics

Western Animation

The Garfield And Friends episode "Sales Resistance" revolves around Garfield's obsession with buying useless stuff off the Shopping Channel - an obsession which he has only in this episode.
Hey Arnold! "Rhonda's Glasses" has Rhonda suddenly turning out to be short-sighted and needing glasses, despite not having had any signs of difficulty before, or after (though when being forced to try on glasses, her mother says her eyes "aren't ready" for contact lenses, suggesting that she was able to acquire some by the time the next episode took place).
Danny Phantom does this frequently, with Danny himself being the usual suspect.
- Tucker had one of these in "Doctor's Disorders." He had a horrible fear of hospitals that we'd never seen or heard of until he had to wear a paper bag over his head just to walk past the nurse's office.
The Simpsons has been doing this just about every week for the past decade. Though some have come to receive Continuity Nods every now and then. One memorable aversion came with Marge's gambling problem, which was expected to become forgotten by the next episode like most but has been managed to be referenced countless times. In some cases, outside of the show.
- One of the most glaring examples of this in the episode "Fear Of Flying", which suddenly introduced Marge's titular phobia and linked it to several incidents in her childhood despite an earlier episode ("Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington") having had the family go on a flight with no incident whatsoever.
- At the end of the episode in which Lisa battles an eating disorder, she specifically says she still has a long way to go until she's completely over it. Of course, it's never mentioned again.
- Also a Running Gag in the form of Homer's "life-long ambition" changing every time it comes up, and Marge pointing this out.
- Homer is seen smoking cigars once or twice, usually for the pose factor. And Ned Flanders shows off a pipe – once – to provide Homer with yet another conversational opener to rebuff.
Family Guy also has a strong habit of doing this. For example, one episode revealed that Peter retains a disliking of handicapped people on the loose reason that they're just "not cool." Completely disregarding the fact one of his best friends (sort of) is handicapped.
- Of course, it would take about half an hour, a slide show, and a guest appearance by Henry Winkler to explain to Peter where the contradiction is here.
- In The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire, Quagmire seems to feel unusually reticent and guilty about sleeping with Cleveland's wife, claiming that because it's the wife of a close friend, he'd be crossing a line. This seems strange considering how often he's tried to seduce Lois.
  - Quagmire has a serious crush on Lois to the point of stalking her— unlike Loretta, who is considerably less attractive. Also, Quagmire only felt guilty after having sex with Loretta.
One of the most horrid cases takes place in the later seasons of Static Shock. In one of several Very Special Episodes, Adam Evans (aka Rubber-Band Man) out of nowhere suddenly has dyslexia, and from what we're told, has had it since he was a child. And not just a mild case for that matter, more like sees a stop sign written in Arabic type. The episode ends with Static and Adam giving a brief speech about dyslexia a la And Knowing Is Half The Battle and Adam's reading disorder is never brought up again. This is particularly egregious, since Adam was previously shown reading. In fact, one episode had him mention aloud (With nobody around for him to be trying to lie to) "I still have all this fan-mail to read" as he picks up, opens, and begins to read said mail (Even more of a retcon since when his dyslexia appears in this episode, the fact that none of his fan-mail was open becomes a clue that he could not read).
Katara's sudden animosity towards her father for leaving her and her brother in the season 3 premiere episode of Avatar The Last Airbender that led to her suffering an emotional breakdown in the same breath it was introduced.
One episode of Futurama gave Bender an obsession with being remembered - something he'd never even hinted that he might have had before. It never came up again.
- In another episode, four of Bender's ten most frequently used words were words he only used in that episode. (Obviously, a parody.)
- A What If episode gave Leela the vice of never being impulsive, despite her being plenty impulsive throughout the series.
- It was also shown that Bender cannot get up if he is knocked onto his back. (All the other times he was slightly on his side.) By the end of the episode, he learns how to overcome his erectile dysfunction.
- Bender's irrational hatred of Nibbler lasts exactly one episode.
  - Although it could be argued that everyone else's irrational obsession with Nibbler at Bender's expense lasted exactly one episode.
Haven't seen enough episodes to be sure, but an episode of the revival of The Woody Woodpecker Show, "Automatic Woody", has Woody dreaming about eating "Butterscotch Finger Pies", and then waking up and finding tons of empty wrappers in the various places he's stashed some for midnight snacking, and then going through lots of trouble to buy some more.
Unfortunately, most of Kim Possible's Character Development is about getting a character flaw of the week that must be conquered by the end of the episode. The best example of this trope would be in So the Drama, where Kim choses The Paolo instead of Ron. She does that, in part, because Bonnie told Kim that dating Ron would be much below her standard, which Kim doesn't object to, which is weird because not only did Kim refuse to believe in those rules when Ron mentioned them in one episode, she also spent the before episode completely in love with Ron.
Brenda's sloveliness was the revealed in the same episode of Teamo Supremo as it was cured. (At least her desire to be a famous pop singer cropped up in more than one episode.)
The Producing Parker episode The Skinny on Parker had Parker developing anorexia and immediately getting over it after being forcefed a sandwich.
One episode of The Fairly Oddparents revealed that Trixie Tang was actually a Tomboy who liked "boy things". The writers apparently regretted this addition to her character, because it was never mentioned again.

Literature

Caffeine Bullet Time

This Is Your Index On Drugs

Contemplating Your Hands

Compassionate Critic

Characters As Device

Conflict Killer

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples